As the fashion types begin to migrate to New York for the start of fashion week, the C-suite bigwigs were leaning in on Wall Street, courting investors at Goldman Sachs’ annual retail conference. 

The message du jour is about control. 

Retail and fashion executives are looking to control what they can in a world where so many things — from tariffs to the economy — are moving of their own accord. 

Talking about controlling what you can control is a clever approach, acknowledging that the market is unstable, while emphasizing that there’s a steady hand on the wheel. 

The steadiest hand these days might well be that of Doug McMillon, chief executive officer of Walmart Inc., who is courting the mass consumer with the discounter’s “save money and live better” approach, while also building a profitable e-commerce business that draws in higher-end consumers.. 

That’s helped give the company a broader, more stable base. 

“If you look at the middle- to upper-income levels, we’re seeing strong demand,” McMillon said. “And if you look at middle to lower, there’s been a little bit of stress. And we’ve seen behavioral change on items that have gone up in cost because of tariffs, where they’re switching from one item to the other. Some of the behavioral stuff that you always see during times of pressure.

“But generally speaking, people have held up really well and we expect the same thing to happen for the balance of the year,” he said. “Big picture, customers want low prices, a really broad assortment, a great experience buying it and they want to do business with somebody they trust. And e-commerce changed the game, obviously, as it relates to retail. The assortment that you can get is incredible. And the delivery, accuracy, and speed, we’re all learning how to improve as it relates to that.”

Walmart isn’t alone in trying to fine-tune after refocusing its business — it’s kind of a mini-trend right now. 

Levi Strauss & Co. has really been pushing its evolution into a much more retail-oriented business and has gotten a lot of spotlight over the last year with its Beyoncé Knowles-Carter ads. 

Now the brand has to follow up on the Queen Bey. 

Harmit Singh, chief financial and growth officer at Levi’s, said the denim giant plans to sustain the marketing momentum. 

“This year was about music,” Singh said. “Next year, we’ve got the Super Bowl at the Levi’s Stadium, we’ve got the World Cup at the Levi’s Stadium. There are definitely a couple of things that we feel over time will continue to maintain the sustained growth that we’re seeing, we’d like to be a mid-digit-growth company, which is about 5 percent.”

Like many other brands, Levi’s is more cautious going into the second half, but feeling good about what it can control. 

“We’re very confident about our product offers and our marketing,” Singh said. “There are probably going to be winners and losers as the macroeconomics play out, I think we’ll be in the winners category because we have the product, we have the people, we have the stores and we have great marketing.” 

That’s a playbook a lot of the big companies are working from. 

Stefan Larsson, CEO at PVH Corp., has been rebuilding the approach at the company’s two mega brands: Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. 

“We lean into the iconic brand love,” Larsson told analysts. “We lean into the biggest and most iconic categories. We put a lot of innovation into the most important products. We amplify it with cut-through campaigns. In Calvin in the second quarter, you saw where we have put innovation into underwear, we’re up 14 percent. Where we have put innovation into new denim, we’re up 19 percent.”

It hasn’t always been an easy transition, especially as Calvin Klein looked to centralize its design in New York.

“Calvin Klein two, three years ago had a completely decentralized product creation,” the CEO said. “So we pulled it together and built global product creation capabilities, same as we already have for Tommy. And we were overconfident — took too many parts of this together in one season. And the team realized that they were on their heels in the middle of a product season, and it had a big negative impact on the gross margin this year. It’s super frustrating.”

But he said the company rolled up its sleeves and is now much better set for the long term. 

“There is not a single successful competitor that doesn’t have a global product capability,” Larsson said. “We had to do it, and we hit some turbulence and then we fixed it. But that’s why I wanted to just shout out to say, it was painful to share last quarter. It’s less painful today because we have fixed it.”